The Role of Mars
In a Healing of the Heart
November 2016
This article is copyrighted and all rights are reserved. No portion of these articles may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, scanning, photocopying, recording, emailing, posting on other web sites, or by any other information storage and retrieval or distribution system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
Mars in the 4th chakra is the initiated hero. In Joseph Campbell’s book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, he suggests that the hardest part of the hero’s journey is the return – coming back from the grand adventure to make a contribution to the betterment of the tribe. This is hard, because the temptation is just to go back into one’s own life, stronger, wiser, and more complete within oneself, after the initiatory adventure. The harder choice is bringing back what one has learned through the hero’s journey and using it to make a contribution for the betterment of the whole.
This was the hard choice faced by the Buddha, for example, after he attained enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree. At this juncture in his journey, he had the chance to simply go off into other realms – beyond the beyond, wherever enlightened beings go, when they leave this plane. Instead, he took what is called the vow of the bodhisattva, which was basically a commitment to stick around in one form or another, until all sentient beings were enlightened. The whole idea of individual enlightenment in this initiated state becomes an oxymoron. Knowing this, you can never just take your winnings and go home. You have got to give something back.
So, Mars in the 4th chakra becomes the returning hero blessing the tribe with his or her enlightenment. In order to do this well – since Mars also resonates strongly in the 2nd and 3rd chakras – the hero has to have found a deep love for the world, for humanity, for the Earth, in the 2nd chakra; and cultivated all the skills necessary to be effective in the world in the 3rd chakra. The lover of the world who is unable to do anything is fairly useless. The effective doer, who has no love for the world, can do a lot of damage. For Mars to awaken in the 4th chakra, both have to come together – as an integration of the 2nd and 3rd chakras.
The next post in this series is Fourth Chakra Patterns on a Sun-Moon Base.
To read more blog posts, go here.